


Insane

by TheQueenofMirth



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Post-Book 2: The Wicked King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 02:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21246068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenofMirth/pseuds/TheQueenofMirth
Summary: Jude saved Elfhame and the High King of their doom. There is a debit to be paid.





	Insane

The Gentry are pampering me, as insane as it sounds.

They keep offering me wine and delights. And the best versions of compliments that their sharp minds manage to create and their deceitful mouths can speak. All that accompanied by courtiers’ smiles, as gorgeous as they are fake.

I’m standing on a platform surrounded by a crowd of courtiers, as well as the finest fabrics that the kingdom of Elfhame has to offer. Three dressmakers dispute my attention, presenting their beautiful but impractical ideas.

They are all striving to please me. Maybe I would burst into laughter if I had not been so shocked. They can not believe I'm such a fool, that they can earn my favour so easily after everything that happened. Because that would mean that their foolishness has no end.

The current situation is as mysterious and strange to them as much as it is to me.

They know that I’m here, in Elfhame Palace, where I shouldn’t be, being treated as the most important guest instead of a criminal. They also know that I have saved Elfhame and their miserable long lives breaking a curse which has woken a monster which froze the land and took away the High King, whom I have returned.

They don’t know that the monster has been their cursed King.

They don’t know what his intentions are towards me now. And that's why they're trying so hard to please me. Not because I have saved them, — if anything they hate me, a mere mortal, more for that — but because they fear that Cardan became indebted to me. Or worst, _ fond of me. _

I'm not trying to hide my disdain or disgust towards them. It is in the way I look at them, the condescending way I talk to them, which makes all their effort to please me even more priceless.

“That one.” A courtier lifts a beautiful fabric, pearly white mixed with a bit of smoky grey. It would be like mist if mist could shine like pearls. “It could make your skin seem lively.” He isn't praising me, but I don’t think he knows that.

“No.” A faerie girl, spread on a couch, smiles lazily at me. “_She _ would be lustful.” My cheeks flush and they laugh at me _again_. They obviously have no idea how actually please a mortal.

I'm deciding what to respond when I hear _him_.

Cardan's uninterested voice comes from the opened double door at my left. “Indeed, she would.” Everyone in the room tenses, me included. Like the rest of Faerie, I also don’t know how things are between us. I’m still waiting for him to throw me out again.

The High King enters and curiosity stirs in the air. Their avidity is too crude. It lacks their usual sophistication. Maybe I should warn them that despair does not fit them well.

Unlike the courtiers, I don’t look to him. I watch the movement of their eyes. Cardan passes behind me, surrounding the platform which the dressmakers have put me on. I can feel his presence, but not his gaze. When he steps close to them, I understand why.

The High King analyses the crown of courtiers without sparing me a glance. “You. You. And you.” He points to three faeries while he speaks — the one that has offended me while trying to praise me, the faerie girl that smiled at me, and another that has given me nasty looks from the start. “Out.”

One by one, Cardan points for each faerie in the room. They leave with no protest. They don’t flirt with him and no one tries to touch him or his clothes as they walk past, which is really strange. There is noise from gossip, but that is all.

I watch the last dressmaker go through the doors with my heart racing and a sick feeling in my stomach. The Bomb, dressed as a guard, blinks at me before closing the doors. I stand paralyzed looking toward them until he calls, “Are you planning to stand? Or will you sit beside me?”

I turn to look at him as carefully as a child looks under the bed for the bogeyman. The only difference is that I find him.

Cardan sits on is sat in a couch with his feet resting on a low table. He doesn’t look at to me too, he is busy leafing through the dresses designs and I can tell they are not impressing him. It’s strange, but a fear him like that more now than as a real monster. I can cut off a snakehead but what I do with _ him_?

“What are you doing?” 

He throws some sketches over his shoulder. “I'm helping you choose a dress.”

I feel as Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat. “_ Why _?”

“The revel is tomorrow.” What he gives me isn’t a real answer. Not to my question at least. “Will you let me choose alone?” He looks to my grey sweatpants and my Wonder Woman t-shirt with condescension. “Maybe you should. My style is better than yours.”

I snort. His ruby cape is like a river following him. “You are much extravagant for me.” His hands lose the grip of two designs that run down across the floor. My gaze follows one of the sheets of paper with a sketch of a dress with straps that certainly cannot hold my breasts. Or _cover _them.

When I look up Cardan is finally staring at me. His eyes are so deep, I get dizzy.

“I’m King.” I don’t understand why, but it seems I hit a nerve.

Cardan is better than me with conversations and dance. In the latter, I have followed his lead before and everything has gone smoother than it would have if I had refused. So I decided to follow his lead again. If he wants to play ‘everything is alright,’ he will discover I pretty good in this game.

“You were gaudy long before becoming King.”

He pops. “Tell me, was it you who chose the savourless dresses you used to wear?” Cardan taps his crown with a nail two times. “Before this.” I’m not hurt by his words. By the way he dresses himself, I'm happy to not have good taste. But I’m astonished by his genuine curiosity.

As the ward of the Grand General, I have never been dressed carelessly. His wife wouldn't allow such sloppiness. But that hasn't been her only concern. I feel myself smile. Maybe it's because I know more about that situation now than I have known then. Maybe I'm just grateful Oriana cared about me. That someone cared.

Maybe because Cardan had never asked me anything so personal before and a part of me — that would be better tied up and then forgotten in a dark corner — is delighted to have his attention. Maybe because I have understood just now that Cardan’s extravagance is not an act, he really enjoys his fancy clothes and part of me thinks it is adorable. That _he _is adorable.

Maybe I just lost my mind.

“No. That was Orianna’s choosing. She feared that-” I’m about to say ‘us’ — me and Taryn — but I can’t. I’m not ready to talk about my sister. “I might catch the interest of someone in Court.”

Cardan chuckles. “So much effort wasted. Every courtier is interested in you now. Aren’t they?” He looks towards the closed door. I have seen this expression on his face before, he has thrown up in a bucket not long after. “They will try to trick you, try to humiliate you,” there is fury in his voice. “To hurt you. And that is just the part of the court fond of Seelie ways. Others will plot your death. None of them will ever accept you.” I do not want his alerts. I do not _ need _them. I know all that better than he ever will. And I’m about to say that when I hear the unexpected, “If you decide to stay here, it will always be like that.”

Shocked and confused, I step down from the platform. Toward him. But, as I have proved many times, I recover quickly. He is granting me something that should have been mine and I refuse to seem grateful for that.

I even managed to sound scornful. “So as it has always been?” 

“If you decide to stay now, I won’t let you go.” He does not try to sound romantic, that is a threat if I've heard one before. But hearing his threats never really gives the results they are supposed to. This time isn’t different.

Cardan’s threat leaves me thrilled. I feel like electricity runs towards my fingertips. I breathe as I've just duelled. My heart beats as if we have kissed. Something is wrong with me. That's not the kind of declaration anyone should like to hear, yet I’m smiling at him proud and triumphant.

He gets up and comes to me, leaving all the designs on the couch. His obvious disgust does not take my smile away. Not even when I can see it so close that I feel his breath when he talks. “You don’t need to _ answer _me now.”

I have wanted to go back to Elfhame, I have craved this hellish place more than I craved my old life in the mortal world when I was a kid. So I have been willing to confront the High King, maybe blackmail him with his biggest secret to achieve that.

But the moment Cardan shows his desire to have me here — the moment I realize I don't have to fight to stay — it is the moment I realize that I don't want to.

I want to be invited back.

“Are you asking me something?” I want him to. And if he doesn’t, I will go back in the mortal world for spite. Maybe I’m pushing my luck, but I throw back his own words from long ago, “**Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.**” They still are bitter in my mouth but on him, the effect is worse.

Cardan is taller than me, and standing so close - making me look up to face him - he usually makes me feel small. But not at this moment, I see him shrinks, I feel big enough to touch the ceiling.

He takes his eyes off me and looks around. We are surrounded by fancy fabrics. They aren’t just beautiful. They are _ fascinating_. There is on in a night blue with stars that shine. A golden one that glows. Some seem alive, made of grass and flowers, almost as if they could breathe and grow. There is not much space for running away from our conversation, but he manages to find one. "There's no use for me to draw you a model before we choose a fabric.”

I didn’t believe he would fall in his kneels before me just like that, but his suggestion baffles me. “Will you draw me a dress?” My confusion makes me talk slow.

Cardan looks at me again. His smile reaches his eyes and overflows. Which makes hard to not smile back. “Although the dressmakers’ sketches are excellent, they are too revealing for your liking. So I will certainly have to.”

“Do you_ draw _?” I’m incredulous.

“Of course,” Cardan steps back and pretentiously gestures to himself. “Who do you think dresses me like this?” He isn’t being proud, but playful. And it messes with me.

Furious butterflies fight in my stomach. I feel sick and excited at the same time. And before I know it, I'm smiling at his jest, like the fool that he makes me. He is distracting me.

The reality of our situation is not worth butterflies in my stomach. “What your dress would cost me?” His smiles dies. Even if I know better, I feel guilty, as if I had stolen candy for a kid.

“You just have to wear it at the next revel, that is the cost.” He sighs deeply. “Now, would you choose a fabric?”

I point for something I know isn’t just pretty but would make me beautiful too. “I like that one.” Cardan has to half-turn his body to see it. His smile blooms like a flower, a smooth movement resulting in an impactful beauty. He not only recognizes the fabric but he is delighted by my choice.

I expect some hint of nostalgic feelings, but he surprises me, “Oh, you liked the dress I got you.”

“What dress?” My question is not motivated by doubt, but by disbelief. I know to what dress he is referring, but, at the same time, I don’t. Because it can not be.

He narrows his eyes to me. “Whom did you think it was? Locke’s?”

“_ No _.” It's embarrassing that he believes I would use something sent by Locke. Especially because I could have done it before finding out about his sick game. “I thought it was from Dain.”

My intentions to calm him fail. I'm very good at pissing off the Folk. Sometimes it happens without my consent.

“Would you have used something Dain gave to you, in front of all the Court?” Cardan is outraged.

“The Court didn’t know.”

“Dain knew.” He need not raise his voice to show that he is angry. His boiling eyes are all he needs. “What if he wanted more from you than be his thief of secrets?”

I'm too shocked to be angry at the insinuation. To me, the idea that Dain could be courting me is too funny to be taken seriously. “He didn’t,” My hand itches, the same hand the deceased prince asked me stab through with a dagger. He was too smart to be so bad at flirting. “Why did _ you _send me the dress?”

“Locke told me about his game with you and your sister and how it would end that night. I bet your sister was planning to stand out, aspiring to eclipse you in her moment of glory. That way your broken heart wouldn't steal the attention she thought she deserved. So I wanted to take that away from her and I wanted him to regret choosing her over you.”

My heart is racing and it's not because of his petty revenge. “It had pockets for knives.” He looked at me and saw me even before I forced him to recognize me.

“Something I should have reconsidered, bearing in mind that you put a dagger against my throat on that night.”

“You drew me a dress.” You don't have to be courted by many to know that receiving a dress conceived and sketched by a prince himself means a lot.

“It was not a task that I would relegate to less skilled hands.” Cardan holds my fist and pulls me against him. His hand finds my back and suddenly we are waltzing. There is no music, though it feels as if he is composing a ballad while guiding me. “I wanted to dance with you. I thought I'd try to change someone’s mind."

"My mind?"

“Or my own. Perhaps I could find an obvious flaw in you that I had not seen -- or admired -- yet. Something that could make my feelings for you disappear. Maybe you could see something in me that you didn't despise yet. Something that-”

“You are an amazing dancer.” I interrupt him because it's distressing to watch Cardan like this. He looks fragile as if a fall could break him.

“It didn’t really matter who. Maybe both. But, the way it was, the situation was becoming unbearable for me. What you said to me after the tournament-”

“I don’t think like that anymore.” And I really don’t.

The dance stops and I feel his lips on mine, they move gently and lightly. This not quite a kiss, but an invitation to one.

It ends too soon.

He takes a deep breath. “And how do you see me now? Better or Worse?” The way he asks makes it sounds like a test. Although I'm sure he doesn't want to hear that I think less of him now, I don't know if he really wants to hear that my opinion has improved.

I choose the truth, “Both.”

And when he goes down on his knees holding my hands, I know I chose wisely.

“I’m young,” He says, and while he speaks I see the chamber change. Greenery springs out from under the carpets, sprawls across the wall, falls out of the ceiling. “I made a lot of foolish decisions and I will probably make some more.” The greenery grows and what was once green bursts with colour when flowers bloom. “But marrying you is not one of them. You are the most compelling, intriguing, challenging person I have ever met. And I can't get enough of you. I just hope you can accept living by my side, for as long as you wish, as my confidant, my wife, my Queen and” he gives his wickedest smile, “my lover.”

I know I’m making no good decision when I get down on my knees to kiss him back. _ Harder_.

We are both insane here.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Jackie (https://faerytalesfromtheabyss.tumblr.com/post/185456441405/cardan-is-judes-fairy-godmother & https://faerytalesfromtheabyss.tumblr.com/post/185832867485/this-irritates-me-but)  
Proof-reader: Jackie  
Edition: Jackie


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